Harvard Art Museums

Sarah Neptune, known as Sarah Molasses

Date

c. 1886

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

Department of American Paintings, Sculpture & Decorative Arts

Institution

Harvard Art Museums

Anna Eliza Hardy’s portrait of Sarah Neptune indexes the close relationship between two prominent Maine families across multiple generations. The portrait is a well-regarded copy after an 1835 portrait of the sitter composed by Jeremiah Hardy, the artist’s father.The Penobscot leader and businesswoman Sarah Neptune is represented in a mix of traditional adornment and period attire that conveys her status in the Wabanaki Confederacy. She wears a black beaver-skin top hat decorated with feathers and a silver hat band with punched design work. Lengths of beaded ribbon are worn close around the neck, in concert with a cross pendant and necklaces of wampum and red coral. Round trade silver brooches (gorgets) of various dimensions are strung together over the ruffled blouse, also adorned with ribbons.The self-fashioning of Sarah Neptune echoes the attire worn by her mother, Mary Pelagie Nicola (known regionally as “Molly Molasses”), in photographic studio portraits of Ms. Nicola, made in in 1860 and 1865, respectively.

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